Inter Ice Age 4

by Kono Abe

  At length Aiba raised his head, shifting in his seat as if he were going to ask a question. Grasping the opportunity, I hastily squirmed in my chair to escape from the spell. But it was as if my vocal cords were coated in paraffin; my voice was pitiful. My self-respect had completely vanished.

  “It must surely be harder to live on land than in the sea. But it’s because of that very difficulty that living creatures evolved into human beings, isn’t it? I can’t approve of any of this,” I said.

  “I suppose not,” muttered Wada.

  “It’s prejudice,” said Professor Yamamoto, recovering himself and feigning cheerfulness. “It’s quite undeniable that living creatures evolved as a result of their struggle with nature. It’s also true that the four ice ages and the three inter ice ages caused the evolution of humanity from Australopithicus to modern man. What was it?-someone put it very well when he said that this creature we call man is a pupil born from the magic handkerchief of the glaciers. However, the human species has ultimately subjugated nature. Man has improved it. He has moved from a wild state to one that is the creation of human hands. That is, we have attained the power to change evolution from something accidental to something deliberate. We may consequently consider that the goal toward which living creatures strived in crawling up from the sea to the land also no longer exists. We had to polish our old lens, but present-day plastic lenses stay clean from the start. The times are no longer such that we can say that hardship forges the man-rebus adversis severus factus. Man is liberated from the natural state. Should he not then logically reconstruct himself? If he did, the circle of struggle and evolution would close. Soon the time will come when he returns to the sea which is his home, not as a slave but as master.”

  “But a slave is a slave,” I said, regaining my strength, although for some reason I heaved a deep sigh of relief. “These creatures are colonials after all; they have neither their own government nor statesmen.”

  “No, they don’t,” interrupted Tanomogi impatiently, “but in any period new men are continually being born from the slaves, aren’t they?”

  “But accepting aquans like that is denying one’s self, isn’t it? Humans on land live as inheritors of a past.”

  “We’ve got to stand it. Enduring our severance with the past is placing ourselves in the future.”

  “But if I’m a traitor to the aquans, aren’t you all traitors to those who live on land?’’

  “But Professor, what about looking at it this way.” He shook his head, showing how easy the whole thing was to understand. “On the one hand the streets are full of unemployed, and business conditions are growing worse and worse.”

  “Of course, of course. You can always justify anything. Yet you have absolutely no right to keep such terrifying plans hidden as you have done.”

  “Oh yes, we have. It’s the right given to the aquans through the forecasting machine. Besides, when the time comes, we’ll make the necessary announcement.”

  “When?”

  “When the majority of mothers have had at least one aquan child. When the prejudice against aquans fades, when the fear that distorts reality has gone. By that time the terror of flooding will have become a reality, and people will have to choose whether to wage war in a scramble for land or to accept aquans as the bearers of the future. Of course,” he added, sliding back his chair noisily, “they’ll choose the aquans.”

  As he finished, he turned and looked around and made a kind of sign to Aiba. To me it was a terribly merciless gesture, and I was shocked as if I had suddenly bumped against a corner in the dark. In the twinkling of an eye, Aiba stood up and slipped an already prepared program card in the slot. He began to manipulate various knobs as he peered through an observer.

  Suddenly I felt a pain as if I had been stabbed with a needle. It was not a needle, but Tanomogi’s right hand that had been gently placed on my left shoulder. Without my realizing it, he was standing bending forward diagonally behind me.

  “It’s the prediction of the future, sir,” he murmured softly. “The blueprint of what is really to come. I know you’re anxious to see it.”

  36

  And the machine told the following story.

  At fifteen thousand feet the thick mud of the lifeless sea floor was spotted with holes, and fluffy as if covered with the hair of some atrophied animal. Abruptly it heaved up. Instantly dispersing, it transformed itself into a dark, upward-welling cloud that wiped out the star points of plankton thronging over the diaphanous black wall.

  Creased shafts of rock were laid bare. Then a mass, glimmering like brown jelly and spewing enormous bubbles of air, spurted up, unfolding infinitely like the branches of some ancient pine. The spume dilated, and the magma, shining darkly, vanished. After that only a great column of steam pierced the marine snow, eddying upward as it soundlessly dispersed. But the column had vanished midst the great water molecules by the time it reached the far-distant surface of the sea.

  At that precise moment, about two nautical miles ahead, a passenger freighter, the Nancho Mam, was heading for Yokohama; the passengers and crew felt merely a brief moment of disorientation at the unexpected creaking and trembling of the ship’s hull. On the bridge the second mate had been alarmed by the faint but sudden change of color that had occurred in the sea and by a school of dolphins leaping in confusion, but he had not considered these especially worthwhile noting in the log. The July sun shone in the sky like molten mercury.

  By then the invisible pulsation of the sea had already become a great tidal wave sweeping landward through the water at the incredible speed of 480 miles an hour.

  The tidal wave passed like a soft breeze over countless rows of submarine farms and oil fields and forests of tulips. Among the aquans, engrossed in their search for fish eggs, no one was even aware of it.

  The next morning the tidal wave washed away the shoreline from Shizuoka to the Boso Peninsula. The Nancho Mam, having received wireless notification of the obliteration of Yokohama, simply came to a halt in the open sea.

  The ship’s captain was completely bewildered by the expression “obliterated,” but the attitude of the passengers was more curious still. Whatever was this calm? But in fact this curious attitude was not something that had just begun. The group that had engaged the whole ship had loaded on a huge machine. Even though they had arrived at their destination, they had made no attempt to unload it. They had ordered the ship to turn back and had furthermore fumbled about with the machine, constantly going back and forth during the voyage to the hold as if it were some kind of experimentation room. Who could this Tanomogi and the others be?

  — Then it’s you?

  —Obviously.

  —You didn’t say anything after you knew Yokohama Harbor had been completely destroyed, did you?

  — No, I didn’t. Since there was advanced warning, almost everyone escaped safely.

  —Well, am I on board that ship too?

  — No, Professor. You are long since . . .

  The flood waters did not recede. A boy and a girl were greedily roaming over the shore in search of treasure. They picked up something, thinking it to be a bangle, but it turned out to be a denture. There was nothing much of value. Then the girl saw a drowned man. She was frightened and wanted to go back, but the boy wanted to turn him over with the end of a stick. The body, grinning, its tongue protruding, reversed its direction and was swept away. It was in fact an aquan who had come to reconnoiter, but the girl, who did not know this, became hysterical and fainted.

  Not only did the water not recede, but the constant earthquakes and the strange rumors of drowned people caused unrest. But what was of much greater concern was the wild report that the government had disappeared. It was, of course, only a rumor, yet it was not absolutely groundless. For the government had already been transferred to the sea.

  There the government buildings were located on a prominence with a good view and surrounded by woods of seaweed and the rocky desert of the first sub
marine ward. On the other side, at the foot of a gentle incline, separated by a sixty-foot ravine, were orange tulip-shaped factories, three on each side, specializing in the manufacture of magnesium and plastics. In view of strange scenery officials were busily making preparations for broadcasting within a floating structure the shape of a cylindrical tube filed with air and moored by three legs.

  At length the broadcast began from an antenna that had been hoisted above the surface of the water.

  — We have finally come to the end of the Fourth Inter Ice Age and have entered a new geological era; we must avoid rash behavior.

  — The government has secretly created aquatic beings in order to carry on international relations and profitably push forward in the development of submarine settlements. At present, eight submarine cities have already been founded with an aquatic population of over three hundred thousand.

  — These populations are happy and obedient, and they have pledged complete co-operation in the present calamity. You will shortly have relief articles delivered to you. Almost all are sent from the sea floor.

  — Further, the distribution of special rations is under consideration for mothers of aquan children. Please tune in for subsequent announcements.

  — Lastly, Japan lays claim to the rights pertaining to territorial waters covering areas as stated elsewhere.

  (The part about special rations was especially popular, as the overwhelming majority of mothers were qualified for these privileges.)

  Behind the government buildings three other slightly smaller structures of the same shape stood in a row. They were ordinary living-quarters, cleverly constructed; on the roofs stood aquacopters. In the expanse of garden surrounded by barbed wire and forbidden to aquans, there were ravines and sunken rocks and woods of multicolored seaweed. On clear days airbreathing civilians, even if they were not interested in insect collecting, would fasten on their aqualungs and watch the sighing sun expanding and contracting through the waves like ends of frosted glass. Or a whole family would go off on a picnic, harpoon guns in hand. But room rents were prohibitively high, and it was hard to manage without government subsidy. Not just anyone could live there because he wanted to.

  On land, life was somehow still going on. There were generators, factories, and shop-lined streets. The average man was in spite of everything living on land although pursued by inflation and the approaching shoreline. Life was more and more difficult, and so if really hard pressed he would make ends meet by hiring on as foreman at some submarine farm. A strange movement among land mothers came into being for the purpose of maintaining close contact with their children. But the aquans themselves were quite unable to comprehend such a desire and did not even respond. The government pretended ignorance. Instead, popular companies were established that promoted group trips to the sea bed; they were very prosperous.

  An incident occurred. Some air-breathing child wearing an aqualung shot and killed an aquan child over the out-of-bounds wall for aquans. The government ruled that no law applied, but the infuriated aquans responded by a strike, albeit partial. In its confusion the government decided to recognize equality of rights before the law for aquans. It worked all right, but from that point on relations between the two changed greatly. Some years later three aquan representatives -for judicial, commercial, and engineering affairs-were added to the government.

  With the passing of time the speed of the rise in sea level increased. People continued their ceaseless migration toward higher land and in the process lost the habit of living in fixed places. There were no longer any railroads or generator stations. People lived aimlessly on alms given by aquans. On certain shorelines, water telescopes were installed, and a business of viewing life in the sea through them sprang up; it was a great success. Bored older folk spent their meager resources watching their children and grandchildren.

  But some years later even the telescopes were rusting at the bottom of the sea.

  — Well, what became of the others, the ones who weren’t allowed out?

  — They kept on living inside buildings filled with air.

  —In safety?

  —Safely, yes. But the guards who make their rounds with harpoon guns no longer wear aqualungs. They’ve been replaced by aquan guards. The aquans decided to preserve the air-breathers as specimens of their human past.

  —Is that enough, Tomoyasu?

  —Mm. Well, I die at about this time anyway.

  Finally the aquans had their own government. It was recognized international Various countries followed their example and adopted their ways.

  But there was just one thing that distressed them. There was a strange illness that appeared in one out of ten or twenty thousand. It was apparently due to bad heredity, perhaps the inheritance of outer secretory glands that Iriri had possessed In the first generation. It was called land sickness, and as soon as it was discovered, surgery was recommended.

  37

  ‘'I told you so,” I exclaimed in spiteful triumph.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s their turn now to be plagued by the land.”

  There was no answer. I could fully sense without looking the devout expressions of those around me, as if they had gathered at a deathbed. Even Wada, who had braced herself, pursed her lips and looked as if she had gone beyond love and hate. At this late date it would serve nothing to be perverse.

  “This is all so far away it makes me feel faint,” murmured someone behind me. Doubtless Professor Yamamoto.

  How distant it was, this future, as indistinct as an ancient past. Suddenly I shuddered, and the breath I was exhaling reversed itself, making a noise in my throat like a broken flute.

  Apparently everything I needed to know was there. But what was I to do? Should I pretend to approve of the future and await the opportunity to proclaim the whole thing publicly? If there were any moral value in justice, I should act thus. If not, should I recognize that I myself was my future enemy and comply with dying? Perhaps I should if there were any moral value in honor. If I did not believe in the future, I should have to accept the first alternative. If I did believe in it, then I should have to recognize the second.

  It would not be strictly correct to say that I was perplexed. More exactly, I was simply telling myself I should be. Doubtless I would be liquidated like some piece of trash, irresolute to the very end. The worst was that I myself could no longer have faith. I seemed to be something worthless, quite properly trash. Perhaps the machine had indeed seen everything precisely.

  I had the impression I was talking with myself, but my thought turned into words. “Is it right to consider the machine so infallible?”

  “That’s the way you usually think, isn’t it?” Surprise and sympathy blended in Tanomogi’s voice.

  “Look here. There’s a possibility of error, isn’t there? The more remote the future, the greater the error. If it’s simply a question of error, that’s still all right, but who can prove that all this is not just an idle musing of the machine? It might very well have made this whole thing up by changing what it didn’t understand or by simplifying and coming up with the most convincing result. After all, if something with three eyes were produced, the machine had the capacity of correcting it to two.”

  “That’s as predicted. At some point, sir, when you began to suspect even the prediction ability of the machine . . .” The rest was blurred in a fit of coughing.

  “I’m not saying that I doubted it. Aren’t doubting it and accepting it absolutely two different problems? Personally, I think that a completely different future . . .”

  “A different future?”

  “You all act as if you were the benefactors of the aquans, but will the marine population of the future be as grateful to you as you think? Surely they will hate you mortally.”

  “A pig doesn’t get angry when you call him a pig. Of course, we’re benefactors.”

  Suddenly my body felt like lead, and I was overcome with a feeling of numbness; my words falte
red. I felt quite as if I were looking into the limitlessness of space, gazing at the stars, the tears welling up in my eyes with the effort. It was like a balance between the finitude of thought and a sense of physical helplessness which was neither despair nor feeling.

  “But,” I said, groping for words, speaking at random, “what has become of my child?”

  “It’s quite safe,” replied Wada softly as if from a distance. “It’s our present to you, sir. It’s the least we can do.”

  38

  The machine continued.

  There was a young man, an apprentice in the submarine oil fields. One time, as he was assisting in the repair of the radio tower belonging to the concession-it was suspended from a plastic boat floating on the surface of the water-he could not forget the strange sensation he had experienced when he had happened to surface without his air suit. (This suit was a working garment provided with a device that constantly sent fresh water to the gills and was worn by aquans for working above the water.) But leaving the water was strictly forbidden by the health authorities. Discovery meant punishment. The young man was thus obliged to keep the secret to himself and tell no one about his experience.

  But unable to put out of his mind the apprehensive feeling that the wind had taken something from his skin, he was again and again lured from the city and would swim far away. Invariably his destination was a plain which was said to be former land. There areas of fast-flowing water and whirlpools were created by the rising and falling of the tides, and bands of mud on the sea bottom would eddy up in stripes, forming moving cliffs that turned into walls of mist. The young man saw all this, and he pictured to himself clouds over the land surface. Of course, even now there were clouds in the sky; in science class they had shown him actual films. But now the clouds were monotonous. Once, when great land areas still covered the globe, the complex configuration of the earth was said to have imposed on the clouds a myriad variations. The whole sky was afloat with dream shapes. How, he wondered, did the people who lived on the land in those ancient times feel when they beheld them?